


Mourning Triptych

by Eglantine



Category: Les Misérables - All Media Types, Les Misérables - Victor Hugo
Genre: AU, But Also Some Angst, Canon Era, F/M, Gen, Giuseppe Mazzini (I don't even know), Irreverence, Off-Screen Major Character Death, survival fic
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-06-05
Updated: 2013-06-05
Packaged: 2017-12-14 01:20:30
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,414
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/831052
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Eglantine/pseuds/Eglantine
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Apparently, in the early manuscript of Les Miserables, Victor Hugo (presumably accidentally) left Joly and Feuilly off of the list of those killed on the barricade. So I took that and ran far, far away with it... so, a survival fic for barricade day. </p><p>----</p><p>“Don’t tell me you’re superstitious about speaking the names of the dead,” he said, his tone gently teasing, though his brow was creased. </p><p>“We’ve—never yet spoken of them,” Joly said, speaking slowly in an effort to keep his voice steady. </p><p>“Perhaps we have been remiss in that.”</p>
            </blockquote>





	Mourning Triptych

 

Joly slowly, carefully eased himself upright. The sun wasn’t out, but at the proper angle, he could see the tree that grew outside his window, and that was good enough. His sister would scold him when she came to bring his supper, as she tended to find excuses to do whether or not he’d disobeyed the doctor’s orders. He’d devised a game for it. While she lectured, he ran over in his mind his list of things that he had recently been assured would kill him, but hadn’t. These included: the outbreak of cholera in Paris; the fighting on the barricade; the furtive, midnight departure and carriage to his parents’ home in Marseille, their wounds barely bound up; when his cold, with help from broken ribs, had settled into his lungs and turned to pneumonia just like he’d always insisted it someday would.

 

Such a list would once have been fodder for days’ worth of panic; now, it gave him a strange sort of courage. Of all the things that felt so strange now, it was in some ways strangest to have lost that lifetime burden of fear of what his own body might do.

 

There came a gentle knock on the door, and Joly stubbornly sat up straighter, bracing himself for his sister’s disapproval. But the face which peeked around the door was not hers, but Feuilly’s.

 

“May I come in?” he asked.

 

“Please. You never need to ask, you know,” Joly added as Feuilly perched himself on the foot of the bed.

 

“I can’t break the habit,” he said, shrugging.

 

“It’s no matter. How are you? Tell me all the latest.”

 

To Joly’s great envy (once he was well enough to feel anything like envy), the regiment for Feuilly’s recovery had been the exact opposite of his: walks, fresh air. These walks, by a route Joly couldn’t hope to understand but which he supposed should not have surprised him, led Feuilly straight to a den of Italian expatriates, friends of Mazzini who had followed him into exile, or met him once he had arrived in Marseille nearly two years before. They all talked politics—Young Italy, and their hopes to spread such movements across Europe. It made Feuilly happy—which, Joly had to admit, he envied slightly, too.

 

“Bottini is in love,” he said, grinning. “Again.”

 

“And with whom this time?”

 

“The daughter of the baker who lives two doors away from him. He led us there, very secretive, to show her to us. We were not secretive at all, of course—her father spied us in and instant and chased us away.”

 

“What else?”

 

“Addario asks once again after Monsieur Joly, of whom he claims I speak incessantly.” Joly flushed and Feuilly smiled. “I promised him that he would make your acquaintance soon.”

 

“Bring them here,” Joly said. “A set of Republican Italians, my parents will be overjoyed.”

 

“I could never impose,” Feuilly said hurriedly. “At any rate, I had a bit of a row with your father.”

 

“You what?” Joly was startled. “When? Why?”

 

“Earlier today,” Feuilly said, looking abashed. “Once the doctor said I was well enough, I started doing some odd jobs—you see, I didn’t tell you because I knew you’d make that face—and your father makes the same one, did you know that? I tried to give him what I’d earned, though of course it’s hardly a fraction of what I owe to all of you—we both raised our voices, I’m afraid—I know I shouldn’t have done, but he wouldn’t accept it—”

 

“And a good thing, too,” Joly interrupted indignantly. “Feuilly, really. I wouldn’t be alive if not for you. I wouldn’t have made it here. And what on earth did you expect me to do, insist you be thrown out on the street because you couldn’t pay your own way? Really, in a circumstance like this, to even think of debt is absurd.”

 

It was Feuilly’s turn to flush red, his long fingers worrying at one of his cuffs. “Your generosity is matchless, as always, but even so—”

 

“Even nothing,” Joly insisted. “I won’t hear of it. We could not have done other than we did, and you can only repay the debt by allowing me to forgive it. Now,” he continued before Feuilly could protest. “Tell me the rest of your news about the Italians.”

 

Feuilly was silent for a long moment.

 

“They’ve begun teaching me Italian,” he said at last, and Joly relaxed back against his pillow. “Prouvaire had always promised to teach me, but we never found—“

 

Joly realized that the pang of pain which shuddered through him at the mention of that name must have shown on his face, because Feuilly broke off abruptly.

 

“Don’t tell me you’re superstitious about speaking the names of the dead,” he said, his tone gently teasing, though his brow was creased.

 

“We’ve—never yet spoken of them,” Joly said, speaking slowly in an effort to keep his voice steady.

 

“Perhaps we have been remiss in that.”

 

Joly looked down at his hands, knotted in the blanket. “I don’t know that I can.”

 

“Well—in some ways, they are what I wanted to talk to you about.” Feuilly shifted closer, pulling his legs up onto the bed and crossing the in front of him. “Your father told me that the doctor said you may well be out of bed before the end of the week, and well enough to travel perhaps two weeks after that.”

 

Joly stared. “To travel? Where?”

 

Feuilly leaned forward eagerly. “The Italians are following Mazzini to Switzerland. They have high hopes of creating a society there dedicated to the advancement of all of Europe—they wish very much to look beyond Italy, and with our help, France could be one of the first to be represented.”

 

“Our help? You can’t mean—you mean to go with them?” 

 

“Yes.” He seized hold of Joly’s hands. “And I want you to come with me. We can continue the work that we began, Joly, but so much bigger.” His fervor softened, and he said, more quietly, “Perhaps I cannot repay my debt to you and your family. But I owe this to them.”  

 

“I—” Joly couldn’t seem to find any words, much less the right ones. “I don’t know. I don’t think so. I don’t think I could.”

 

“Come with us as far as Paris, at least,” Feuilly insisted.

 

“Paris?” Joly’s hands tightened around Feuilly’s in alarm. “Is that wise? Is it safe?”

 

“Yes,” Feuilly said. “The trials are long over. And even if someone did decide that for whatever reason we absolutely must be arrested, anyone who can prove with certainty that we were there is dead. I’m sorry,” he added when Joly flinched. “My bluntness offends you.”

 

“I’m not offended,” Joly said weakly. “I assure you, I’m not. I suppose it’s just that I—I can’t yet think of any of it with ease. Much less speak of it so casually.”

 

“It isn’t casual,” Feuilly said, sounding almost wounded. “It will never be that. It is very—it is perhaps the most important thing. And that is why it—they—must be spoken of.”

 

“My sister will be coming soon,” Joly said after a long moment’s silence. “I should lie down to avoid being told off. You needn’t go,” he added quickly, seeing Feuilly start to stand. Feuilly smiled.

 

“I’ve found it best to keep out of your sister’s way,” he said. “I’ll return when the field is clear.”

 

“Please do. And I— “ Joly hesitated. “I’ll consider Paris. I promise.”

 

                                               *

 

In the end, he agreed to Paris. Switzerland he promised to consider, though he could not bring himself to tell Feuilly just yet that he knew the answer would be no. But Paris—Paris was a city made for beginning again. In the final weeks of his recovery, he realized that a fresh start was in order. A new, quieter life, with old pain set aside and loose ends tied neatly up.

 

He just hoped to God, as the porter nodded at him in recognition and he started up the stairs, that Musichetta still lived in the same rooms.

 

His feet moved as if by instinct, hopping the broken step and veering around that narrow corner as if he had been there only yesterday. He knocked quickly when he reached the door, to leave himself no time to reconsider. A few moments passed, and it swung open. And there she was.

 

They stared at one another, and neither seemed able to move or to speak. Joly wasn’t entirely sure he was even breathing, or that his heart was beating.

 

“I knew it,” she said at last, and her hands quivered as if she wanted to reach out to him, but didn’t. “When no one could say they’d seen your body, I knew you had to be alive. Irma said I was a fool to think so. But I was sure you were in exile somewhere glamorous. Or England.”

 

“Just Marseille, I’m afraid,” he said, almost managing a smile.

 

“I should have guessed,” she said. “Your accent’s even worse than before. But I’m being—come in, will you? Goodness, please, come in.” She did reach for him then, wrapping her white fingers around his wrist and tugging him into the room.

 

It looked the same as it ever had, bits and pieces of half-finished dresses and other small work strewn about. He sat down and took off his hat, and she eagerly dragged her other chair closer, so they were seated knee-to-knee.

 

“I missed you so much,” she said softly. He nodded.

 

“I missed you, too. I—” It seemed best to get straight to the point, so he swallowed and said, “I came back to ask you something, Musichetta.”

 

“Yes, of course,” she said, leaning forward and placing her hands on his knees. “Anything.”

 

He shifted in his chair. He felt as if he ought to assume a pose, indicate somehow the solemnity of his intent—but he couldn’t think of what to do. He settled at last for laying his hands on top of hers, and fixing her dark eyes with his pale ones.

 

“Will you marry me?”

 

She stared at him for a moment, then smiled. “You’re teasing me.”

 

“I’m not,” he insisted. “Truly, I’m not.”

 

“You _are_ ,” she said, carefully extricating her hands from his. “You must be. Good medical students do not marry seamstresses.”

 

“Who ever said I was a good medical student?”

 

“Joly.”

 

“Musichetta, I’m serious! When have I ever cared for things like that? And when did we ever bother to do things the usual way? Please,” he said, scrambling to his feet as she stood and turned away. “It’s like we always swore, that one day the world would be good and people would be happy, and most of all we could be together, you a seamstress and me a doctor and he—“

 

His voice faltered and died, and his gaze fell to the floor. He felt Musichetta take his hands into hers, and she looked up to see her smiling at him, though those fortune-teller’s eyes were sad.

 

 “Ah, Joly,” she said. “You don’t want me. You want someone who is dead, and a time that is gone now.”

 

“No,” he protested, though it came out no stronger than a whisper. “No, I want you.”

 

“You think I’ll make you happy,” she said. “But I won’t, my dear, and I can’t.”

 

“Can’t you?” he asked desperately. “How do you know?”

 

“Because it would never be just the two of us,” she said. “Living together, we’d spend every second looking for him out of the corner of our eye, leaving a chair for him like Elijah.” The corner of her mouth twitched. “I’d reach over in bed and wonder how he’d managed to grow all his hair back.” The twitch bloomed into a smile, and she brought her hands to her mouth to try and hide it. “Or perhaps I’d reach down to your chest and wonder where it had all gone.”

 

“Musichetta!” Joly said, scandalized, but she had started laughing helplessly.

 

“ I—I would always tease him that it wasn’t that he’d lost his hair, it had just migrated,” she cried from between her fingers, shoulders shaking with laughter. Joly found the urge to smile was growing irresistible.

 

“He had his good qualities, to be sure,” he said. “He never stole the blankets.”

 

“No, not ever,” she agreed. “He would just _cling_ to you all night through. Push him away in the middle of the night and he’d zip right back just like your magnets without even waking up—”

 

She sank back into her chair, tears spilling over her cheeks, though whether they were really just from laughter, Joly could not possibly have guessed. Gradually, she managed to catch her breath and quiet her laughter.

 

When she was calm at last, Joly said, “Do you remember that wig Courfeyrac gave him?” And they both dissolved into fresh fits of laughter, each breathlessly attempting to relate what they remembered of that highly unfortunate gift. Joly’s heart ached, but the quality of the pain seemed different than before.

 

“Oh, Lord,” Musichetta managed at last. “What on earth would he think of us?”

 

“I have no—” He began, but broke off as he realize that wasn’t true. “No. Come, Musichetta. You know exactly what he’d think.”

 

“Yes.” She smiled. “I suppose that I do.”

 

She stood up and smoothed out her skirts, then offered Joly her hands. He drew closer and took them.

 

“You do see, don’t you?” she said. “Why we can’t?”

 

Part of him wanted to protested that she had to be wrong, that it was good and right to marry, that they had to stay together because they were the only ones who had known him so well—

 

He swallowed, and then nodded. “And you—you’ll be alright, won’t you?”

 

“Who, me?” She laughed. “I’m always just fine. Don’t worry about me. We’ll see each other again, I’m sure of it.”

 

He smiled weakly. She squeezed his hands and stood on tiptoe to kiss his cheek goodbye.  

 

                                               *

 

“You’re quiet this evening,” Feuilly noted hesitantly over a bottle of wine in the room they were sharing. Joly recognized the overture, Feuilly offering, in his characteristically gentle way, to listen, but he couldn’t bring himself to accept it. He felt too strange and guilty about the events of the afternoon—about laughing, about having been _happy,_ even in such a backwards way—to attempt to put any of it into words.

 

“When do you leave?” he asked instead.

 

“Five days, they say,” Feuilly replied, accepting the rebuff without comment. “You must allow me to hope that will be enough time to convince you.”

 

“It may yet be,” Joly said. “There isn’t much left for us in Paris, is there.”

 

“I’ve never had much at all, but I can’t believe that.” He gazed down into his wine glass. “This is our home. By choice, if not by birth. It is the heart of—everything. Those who came before us fought here, and those who come after will, too. I think there will always be something in Paris.”

 

“Then why are you going?”

 

Feuilly traced his finger along the rim of his glass, a small smile fluttering unconsciously across his face when the glass started to sing.

 

“Because I feel I must do more now,” he said above the soft ringing. “I lived when others died. Not just on the barricade—in every fight we’ve had since 1830, and as a child, and every day that I had a job and others did not. And I have always believed that in return for being alive, I must do something. I must learn something and change something for every time I was spared. And I’ve been spared once again— _we_ have—and this is something I can do, something I can learn. Some way I can change things, I hope.”

 

“You probably think me very selfish,” Joly said. Feuilly looked up quickly and shook his head.

 

“No,” he said instantly. “No, I don’t. I don’t claim that what I believe is true, only that it’s true for me. I know that whatever you do will be what you think is right.”

 

“But what _is_ right?” he asked. “To tell the truth, I envy you your certainty. I wish I had the slightest notion what my being alive means, and what I’m meant to do with it. I will never be the doctor Combeferre would have been, or a leader like Enjolras, or a fighter like Bahorel, and I—” He broke off and continued more quietly. “I realized this afternoon that the last thing Lesgle would want is to know I mourned him and the rest forever. But if not that, I don’t know what to do.” 

 

“Well.” Feuilly set aside his wine glass and stretched out his legs. “In five days, if you still don’t know— come with me.”

 

                                               *

 

The only solution to a state of such miserable uncertainty was to wander. For two days, Joly set his feet in no particular direction and let the winding streets of Paris lead him where they would. If things were as they should be, he thought, this would be when he would stumble into Lesgle on his way, whose mishaps were always greater than his own; or Prouvaire in a melancholy mood; or Courfeyrac and Bahorel poised to laugh him out of introspection.

 

Instead, on the third day, he saw Marius.

 

He stopped dead in the middle of the street and stared as the young man passed on the opposite side of the road. His head was ducked, as it always had been, and he still wore all black, though the suit was nicer than any Joly had ever seen him wear before.

 

“Marius!” he called, half salutation and half question, and the black-clad figure turned. He glanced about the street for a moment or two, then his gaze fell on Joly and he went chalk white beneath his mop of black curls.

 

Joly had never known Marius Pontmercy well, certainly not as well as the law students, who had had more cause to see him after he’d stopped coming to meetings. But Lesgle had always felt immensely and inexplicably affectionate towards him, which naturally made Joly inclined to like him, too.

 

Marius, to the irritation of the passersby, was fighting his away against the flow of pedestrians to reach Joly’s side.

 

“My God,” he gasped when he finally arrived. “My _God_ , you—how--? I thought everyone had—”

 

“They did,” Joly said shortly. “They are. Everyone but Feuilly and me.”

 

“How did you get away?” Marius asked, his wide grey eyes still running Joly up and down, as if certain he would disappear at any moment.

  
“The Guardsmen left us for dead. We weren’t. To tell you the truth, I hardly remember—Feuilly was the one who rescued us, really. Then I brought us to my parents, in Marseille.”  

 

“Why did you come back to Paris?” he asked.

 

“Feuilly is going to Switzerland—it’s a rather long story. And for me, having lived in Paris once, it seems impossible to imagine living anywhere else. But you,” he said, wishing very much to get off the subject of himself. “How did you get away?”

 

“My wife’s—that old man, that volunteer, he—” Marius cast his eyes to the ground, seeming momentarily overcome. He raised them again and said abruptly, “I’m married now.”

 

“Congratulations,” Joly said, somehow unsurprised. “I had heard you were in love.”

 

“Yes, thank you. But listen, Joly, do you think…”

 

“Do I think what?” Joly prompted when the end of the sentence did not seem to be forthcoming.

 

“Are you free for supper tomorrow?” Marius asked quickly. “May we speak? I’ve thought so much recently of—I’ve wished very much for someone to speak to.”

 

“Of course,” Joly said, making no effort whatsoever to hide his bewilderment. Marius didn’t seem to notice anyway. He seemed too relieved by Joly’s agreement to pay much attention to anything else.

 

“Tomorrow, then,” he said.

 

                                                *

 

Of all the advice that Joly spent the next day imagining Marius would ask, ranging from the bizarre to the embarrassing to the possibly illegal, the one thing which failed to make the list was the one thing Marius wanted to discuss: politics.

 

“My grandfather has gotten much more tolerant—that is, he won’t throw me out of the house again—but the truth of the matter is, there is still so much I don’t understand,” Marius said, looking so meek and guilty one would think he was confessing a crime. “I can’t very well debate in any reasoned way with him, or ask questions. But all this time, I’ve had no idea who I could go to.”

 

“I’m quite surprised to hear it,” Joly said. “Anyone could tell your heart was never in it before. To be perfectly honest, I wondered why you came to fight at all.”

 

“Because I wanted to die,” he said simply.

 

The quip came spilling from Joly’s mouth so seamlessly, he half expected to hear it in Lesgle’s voice: ”Well, really, my friend. You can’t have been trying very hard, in that case.”

 

Marius looked faintly horrified, but Joly felt a grin spreading across his mouth almost in spite of himself. He rubbed his nose with his cane in an effort to hide it.

 

“Sorry,” he said. “Tell me, what brought about this—this change? You were a Bonapartist. But it sounds to me as if you are beginning to turn Republican.”

 

“I don’t know what I’m turning, really,” Marius said. “But I realized that France has no right to glory while people live as they do. While—while a man can be imprisoned for half his life for the crime of trying not to starve. And though I thought that believing other than as my father did would be to betray him yet again, perhaps—perhaps that isn’t the way love works.”

 

Joly understood little of this, and suspected it wasn’t really meant for him anyway. He leaned across the table and refilled Marius’s wine glass. This jolted Marius from his reverie, and he offered a small but grateful smile.

 

“It’s all quite stupid, isn’t it?” he said. “That I of all people—I’m half confusion and half ignorance and not at all worth what all of you fought for. It doesn’t seem right that I should be one of the ones to survive.”

 

“You’ve expressed my feelings exactly,” Joly said, raising his glass in salute. “I’ve no idea why on earth the least of us should have been left behind. I don’t mean Feuilly, of course—he’s off to do great things, as we all suspected he would. Which leaves poor France with you and I.”

 

“Don’t say that,” Marius said. “You are as great as any of them. You believe just as much.”

 

“And that’s all it takes, is it?” he asked wryly. “Believing?”

 

Quite sincerely, Marius said, “I’m beginning to think it is the hardest thing in the world. At every step, I’ve felt so certain that I knew what I believed—from royalist to Bonapartist to nothing much at all. It’s dizzying, really, to know you are prying into things that will change everything you see. But even so, I—if it’s not too much to ask, I—hope that perhaps you could help me begin. I wasn’t ready for the lot of you, then. But I think I might be now.”

 

“There aren’t the lot of us anymore,” Joly said. “There’s just me.”

 

                                                *

 

Slightly tipsy by the time he made his way home (Marius had apologized profusely for presuming, and followed up every apology with more wine), Joly tried his best to move quietly, but didn’t exactly succeed. Not that it mattered, anyway—after he noisily dropped his cane, he realized that Feuilly was awake, curled up on his bed with a book.

 

“How is our friend Pontmercy?” he asked, sounding slightly amused.

 

“Oh, well,” Joly said, flopping onto the edge of his bed and starting to tug off his shoes. “Married and prosperous and terribly bourgeois, budding republicanism aside.”

 

“What on earth do you mean?” Feuilly asked, lowering his book.

 

“He’s apparently decided that, having already nearly died for the Republic, he’d best find out what on earth he was dying over.” Joly shook his head. “Lawyers.”

 

“It’s better late than never,” Feuilly said. “I hope you encouraged him.”

 

“I don’t know that I did,” Joly admitted. He fell silent for a long while. When he broke the stillness at last, it was to say abruptly, “We were drunk nearly the whole first day.”

 

“I beg your pardon?”

 

“Lesgle and I,” Joly said. “We got appallingly drunk with Grantaire, and by the time you all showed up and started to build up the barricade, I could hardly see straight. I don’t think my head entirely cleared until the first shots were fired. Perhaps not even then. While we were rationing out cartridges, I kept getting overcome with laughter and slipping away so that no one would see me giggling over nothing.”

 

“You did a very good job of hiding it,” Feuilly said mildly.

 

“I have no idea why we got so drunk,” Joly said. “We knew about the funeral, and the plans for after. I suppose I didn’t think anything very serious would come of it. And yet—” His throat felt tight, but he pressed on. “There is no other way I would have wished to spend my last proper morning with him. With everyone.”

 

Feuilly set his book aside. He climbed out of his bed and sat down next to Joly, sliding an arm around his shoulders. Joly smiled and took a shaky breath.

 

“So, you and the Italians will take over Europe, will you?”

 

“Not take it over,” Feuilly said. “Set it free. You know that.”

 

“Set it free,” he echoed softly. “Yes. I think perhaps you will. And Paris will be right behind you. Though with Marius and me as your correspondents, God knows what that will be worth.”

 

Feuilly laughed and tightened his arm around Joly, pulling him close. “You’ll be enough. That’s all any of us can hope for, don’t you think? To be enough.”  

 

Joly closed his eyes and leaned his head against Feuilly’s shoulder and nodded. He would think so. And in time, perhaps, he would believe. 

**Author's Note:**

> The dates for Mazzini/Young Europe are all messed up (Young Europe wasn't founded until 1834, and Young France after that, and I couldn't find consistent dates for when precisely Mazzini left Marseille), but Feuilly would obviously be so into that, so I had to do it.


End file.
